Oops: Arne Duncan may’ve been a bit overenthusiastic in his dire sequester warnings

posted at 10:01 pm on February 27, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

This morning, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the latest Cabinet member to hit the briefing room and lament the many ghastly ways in which sequestration would man-handle his department’s many absolutely essential functions. Via Politico:

“Kids are gonna get hurt, kids are gonna get hurt. That’s just the reality,” he said. His visit to the briefing room followed recent appearances by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Duncan expressed real frustration with Congress for being unable to avoid the spending cuts due to begin taking effect on Friday. The dysfunction is “unimaginable,” he said, and makes him “angry” because students will be “taking steps backwards because folks in Washington can’t get their acts together.”

Which certainly does sound serious, but also just happens to make it sound like growing the Department of Education specifically, and big government generally, is unequivocally the best and only remedy for furthering kids’ welfare in this country.

His presentation was similarly dramatic to the claims he made on CBS on Sunday, insisting that “there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall.” But, when questioned further about that claim in his press briefing today, well… awkward:

When he was pressed in a White House briefing Wednesday to come up with an example, Duncan named a single county in West Virginia and acknowledged, “whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know.”

And, as it turns out, it isn’t.

Officials in Kanawha County, West Virginia say that the “transfer notices” sent to at least 104 educators had more to do with a separate matter that involves a change in the way West Virginia allocates federal dollars designated for poor children.

She said those 104 notices will ultimately result in the elimination of about five to six teaching jobs, which were likely to be cut regardless of the sequester.

Politicians have been trying to outdo each other in deploying what the neoliberal Washington Monthly founder Charles Peters coined in 1976 as the “firemen first” principle — the notion that “the public will support (the Clever Bureaucrat’s) valiant fight against the budget reduction only if essential services are endangered. Thus, C.B. always picks on teachers, policemen, firemen first.”

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He comes from the Chicago school district. That alone should automatically put him beneath pond scum when looking for knowledge on how to positively effect education. But, in the Obama administration, he is the boss.

This morning, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the latest Cabinet member to hit the briefing room and lament the many ghastly ways in which sequestration would man-handle his department’s many absolutely essential functions. Via Politico:
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All this for a spending cut that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will be around $44 billion in 2013, a tiny sliver of the federal budget. Imagine the squeals if it included significant cuts.

It cannot be overemphasized. WE. MUST. REGAIN. THE. NARRATIVE.

Tossing off inaccurate references to “spending cuts” when no such thing is even contemplated is playing directly into liberal hands.

Perhaps in the real world the phrases “spending cuts” and “budget cuts” could be equated. But this ain’t the real world, and we have to stop calling cuts to spending that hasn’t taken place “spending cuts.” And of course, we have to set about educating one and all that “budget cuts” in DC don’t really mean cutting anything at all.

So lets get Washington out of the education business. More accountability at a local level.

Washington never should have had a say in the first place. The Education Department is just Jimmy Carter’s sop to the (illegal) teachers’ unions that helped get him elected. Worse, it’s more and more a tool for federal bureaucrats to use to homogenize and sterilize and secularize the message that oozes through the public schools: government is good, God is… who?

I will never forget when Arne Duncan was made head of the Chicago Public Schools. He was all of 32 years old,,which is bizarre in and of itself. His mommy was a big associate/booster whatever of Major Daley. When Daley had the press conference announcing Duncan as his pic to run the department, this same woman..Arne’s mama, came to the podium and gave a very long rambling speech about how proud she was of her boy.

I’m not kidding. It was screwy with a capital “S”. Why did Obama pick this clown? Took his cues from Daley I guess.

Arguing to end Federal interference in education is pointless as long as the unions hold sway, until that monopoly is broken it will be SSDD. Expecting anything different is meeting the definition of insanity.

Trot them all out and let them all get hysterical for the cameras.
When sequestration hits and the country doesn’t collapse and dogs and cats aren’t living together, they’ll look the fools.
ButterflyDragon on February 27, 2013 at 10:14 PM

They will never look like fools. They have the absolute protection and absolution of the NYT, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, WsPo, HuffPo, McClatchey, all the Unions, Soros, POLITICO, Buffett, Gates, and all the rest of the fifth column in this country,

The U.S. Department of Education is nothing more than a sinkhole that is sucking the life out of our children’s future. Their FY 2012 discretionary appropriations totalled $68 billion, a 15% increase over 2008. Add to that annual expenditure a bonanza of $98 billion from the Recovery Act and you begin to get a feel for the extent to which our pockets are being picked.

Do our children benefit from this oxymoronically-named government bureacracy? Do they learn more or more effectively because of the $2 billion the bureacracy itself consumes? Are they smarter because we tossed $74 million into International Education and Foreign Language Studies? Do they benefit from $57 million being squandered on Regional Education Laboratories? Or how about the proposed $5 billion for Strengthening the Teaching Profession?

Oh, and don’t forget that we put about a quarter of this on our Country Credit Card… It’s time to euthenize this beast.

They will never look like fools. They have the absolute protection and absolution of the NYT, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, WsPo, HuffPo, McClatchey, all the Unions, Soros, POLITICO, Buffett, Gates, and all the rest of the fifth column in this country,

Oh, and don’t forget that we put about a quarter of this on our Country Credit Card… It’s time to euthenize this beast.

HotJavaJack on February 28, 2013 at 8:55 AM

Nope, the only thing going on the Country Credit Card is welfare, including social security and medicare. I will never consider any other spending to be on that credit card. The people who created and own that debt are the deadbeats of our society.

Yes, even the retired rich social security recipient in my book is a deadbeat. Particularly the childless ones!

I would not completely abolish the Dept. Of Education, but I would cut it down to a small research and advisory group of about a dozen employees with salaries in line with the private sector. Public education should be the responsibility of the states and curriculum should be determined by local boards under the approval and review of the local community.

”Kids are gonna get hurt, kids are gonna get hurt. That’s just the reality,” he said.

So the WH story is that kids will be hurt by a few billion less in spending increases, but won’t be hurt by $6 trillion in new debt. The daily hypocrisy from this wretched bunch continues to reach new lows.